This chapter evaluates the competing models or understandings of culture currently available to social theory using the concept of cultural autonomy. It highlights the fundamental flaws that ...
More

This chapter evaluates the competing models or understandings of culture currently available to social theory using the concept of cultural autonomy. It highlights the fundamental flaws that characterize most of these models and proposes an alternative approach that can be broadly understood as a kind of structural hermeneutics. It explains that structuralism and hermeneutics can be made into fine bedfellows because the former offers possibilities for general theory construction, prediction, and assertions of the autonomy of culture while the latter allows analysis to capture the texture and temper of social life.Less

The Strong Program In Cultural Sociology : Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics (with Philip Smith)

Jeffrey C. AlexanderPhilip Smith

Published in print: 2003-10-09

This chapter evaluates the competing models or understandings of culture currently available to social theory using the concept of cultural autonomy. It highlights the fundamental flaws that characterize most of these models and proposes an alternative approach that can be broadly understood as a kind of structural hermeneutics. It explains that structuralism and hermeneutics can be made into fine bedfellows because the former offers possibilities for general theory construction, prediction, and assertions of the autonomy of culture while the latter allows analysis to capture the texture and temper of social life.

The chapter argues that Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutics offers a way forward in examining not only the ideological and narrative structures of television, but also particular modalities through which ...
More

The chapter argues that Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutics offers a way forward in examining not only the ideological and narrative structures of television, but also particular modalities through which viewers appropriate and interpret televisual texts. To this end, the chapter shall sketch an analytic framework by bringing together Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy, particularly his concepts of narrative identity and temporality, and the notion of social imaginaries developed by postcolonial theory in a productive dialogue. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics presents an understanding of the human subject in terms of an embodied subjectivity that takes us beyond singular conceptions of identity, whether in terms of the abstract Cartesian subject, or various other discourse-centred theorizations of subject. The chapter demonstrates that the notion of embodied subjectivity and social imaginaries enable a better grasp in examining the articulations of class, caste, gender, and religious identities on Indian television.Less

Television, Narrative Identity, and Social Imaginaries : A Hermeneutic Approach

Sanjay Asthana

Published in print: 2014-02-01

The chapter argues that Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutics offers a way forward in examining not only the ideological and narrative structures of television, but also particular modalities through which viewers appropriate and interpret televisual texts. To this end, the chapter shall sketch an analytic framework by bringing together Ricoeur’s hermeneutic philosophy, particularly his concepts of narrative identity and temporality, and the notion of social imaginaries developed by postcolonial theory in a productive dialogue. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics presents an understanding of the human subject in terms of an embodied subjectivity that takes us beyond singular conceptions of identity, whether in terms of the abstract Cartesian subject, or various other discourse-centred theorizations of subject. The chapter demonstrates that the notion of embodied subjectivity and social imaginaries enable a better grasp in examining the articulations of class, caste, gender, and religious identities on Indian television.